-Ponyville, Sweet Apple Acres, Arizona-
“So we were wiping out everyone dumb enough to stick around, then my mother charges in with a stick of dynamite in her mouth.” My Fœnum mother wasn’t as nearly insane as my actual Equus mother was. I am kind of proud of having ‘Mad Cow’ Maggie as a mom and she was amazingly awesome as a bounty hunter, but she terrified me when she had access to explosives of any kind. “Can you imagine how it felt to watch her light a dynamite stick with a hoof spark technique, especially when it was still in her mouth?!”
“Wasn’t that technique made by the longma?” Rainbow stated as she was chugging cider like no tomorrow, she nuzzled against Applejack who blushed slightly. “I mean they are kind of the leaders in martial arts traditions.”
“Yeah, don’t know much about them fancy fighting techniques, all I know is that just about everyone in the filly scouts knows how to do that in emergencies.” Applejack finally answered and then passed me a mug of chilled apple cider. “It’s nice to have you over for cider.”
“Oh come on, I’m not nearly that bad.” That would be my mother, Maggie, trying to insert her large self into my life and she sidled up to the table to look at the mugs of cider with a grin.
While I loved her dearly, and absolutely cherished her, she was crazier than I could handle sometimes. This was saying something, considering I was married to Velvet ‘frosty farts’ and Paprika ‘snuggle everything’ Paca.
“Do I go on endlessly about your tiny udders Arizona?!” Velvet’s voice could be heard from across the entirety of Ponyville and I blinked in confusion. “Stop thinking about my condition so loudly!”
“It’s amazing that my daughter in law knows exactly what my little Zone is thinking about her.” Mom slapped the end of the table, a mug flew up and all its contents went into her mouth. She belched loudly as the empty mug landed in front of her. She pulled out a stick of dynamite and chewed on the end that didn’t have the fuse on it. “That’s the good stuff. Pear and Bright would be happy that your living this well, they’d be quite proud of you even Applejack. Should introduce you to an old friend of mine called Buck Wildly someday, good guy if a bit full of himself.”
“I’m a might bit concerned that you have that.” Applejack stated at seeing that my mother does in fact tend to chew on dynamite sticks, and that I wasn’t exaggerating about her eccentricities.
“I’m not going to light it kiddo.” It was hard to believe my mother when she was already halfway into doing exactly that, I pointed it out. "Oh... whoops..."
-Rocket Knight Realm, South Cladinhold, Pom-
“Charge!” We had a plan, which of course looked stupid at the start of it with us riding Dodo into battle and straight towards a larger goofy looking, if still lethal, eight limbed large red machine. “I hope you’re ready Shanty.”
Jean and Colleen would hopefully catch up with us soon, because we were going to need all the help we could get to bring this thing down.
“I be handling it, just don’t be getting hurt again so soon Pom.” Shanty was ready to leap off of Dodo’s back when he ran close to the machine.
The main offense would be Smolder, Dodo and me, while Shanty would be trying to keep the odd magic wielding lizard busy. I could deal some damage to the tentacles with my bark blasts, Dodo had his beak bursts and, if given enough time, Smolder could breathe fire powerful enough to melt metal. We had to deal with the eight tentacles on top of the mechanical shrimp it would be generating.
I really didn’t like where I was in life right now, but I wanted to save lives and the best way to do that would be to occupy the attention of the machine.
“Three… two… one… okay, go!” I leapt to the right off of Dodo’s right side and inflated the puff on my head to slow my momentum and land safely on my hooves. Dodo charged right by the machine while attacking the large metal tentacles as he did.
Smolder was already airborne and blasting the tentacles with a series of powerful looking fireballs for her size and age.
While that was going on, I was reaching out with my front hooves to grab onto Shanty’s as she leapt for me.
“Be safe and watch for tricks Shanty, I know you’ve got a few of your own that you’ve never shown me.” I stated as I swung her around twice and then heaved her at the machine over the tentacles coming for us, then leapt backwards out of the range of the sweeping attack.
Dodo was already running out of range and was making a turn for another hit and run attack. Ocellus was unconscious, but she was safely curled up in his back. I trusted Shanty’s familiar bond with him to see Ocellus safely through this, the changeling decided to knock herself out for her own good as the mental stress was becoming unbearable.
I sent Shanty flying in a horizontal spin to a little below half way up the machine where she clamped onto the head with all four of her hooves in an impressive acrobatic display, she then started running up towards where the lizard currently was on top of the head to face him down.
I leapt back as a tentacle nearly came down on top of me. I sent three sharp barks into the chain of cylinders doing some minimal damage by minor dents. This could take a while, but at least this machine was far slower than that train was.
Rolling under a swiping tentacle I watched as Smolder narrowly flew out of the way of the one tried to wrap around and grab her, she was attack them at their base points. If the two goofy eyes were controlling four limbs each, then we were going to need whatever firepower Jean or Colleen could come up with from a nearby armory while we personally kept this thing distracted.
Our odds of taking this thing down would soon change for the better when Jean and Colleen arrived, even if they couldn’t find some heavy weaponry like a cannon to use. Hopefully they could get something like the Zebulous mech unit, but I’m not holding my breath as I leapt onto a tentacle and jumped off immediately as another slapped down on it.
The Zebulos Kingdom did have technology, but they were slow and wary to use it without careful application. They made sure that it was safe for the machines to be piloted by their people. With things like the evil cores existing and souls being eaten by machinery like what we heard happened to Generalissimo Lioness, it was understandable that they were taking things slowly on their technological front compared to the other empires that had more self-destructive tendencies.
Most soldiers from the friendlier kingdoms didn’t know how to wield their magic effectively in more ways than just enhancing weapons, but their effectiveness in wielding magic leveled the playing field for the average foot soldier against technology several levels beyond what even Equestria was capable of.
I knew Colleen would get here quickly… my effect was almost like mind control sometimes and I was going to need to convey this to her if we survive this. Hopefully she would understand that her own feelings around me might not be normal.
In my distracted thoughts as I jumped, dove and rolled, I was narrowly grasped by one of the tentacles and then it fired a shrimp after me. I avoided the shrimp hitting me with the force of a cannonball and it popped open to start firing on me only to be blasted apart by a fireball from above.
The other seven tentacles started to fire shrimp too, I narrowed my eyes as I avoid three shots directed at me and Smolder swerved through the other four. The large goofy looking eyes on the octopus focused on us and started to glow red.
I declared war on the Gedol Empire and if I wasn’t strong enough to live up to my declaration, then a lot of people were going to get hurt.
Planting my hooves and flexing my wool a tentacle slammed into me and the sound of warping metal could be heard a portion of the tentacle bent inwards on impact and the ground around me buckled. I quickly flipped backwards over it trying to grasp me and landed my left rear hoof on the head of a shrimp and brought my other down to destroy it as I flipped backwards a second time.
I threw a backwards flying buck that sent a shrimp skidding into another tentacle preventing it from coming for me when the shrimp eventually exploded to halt its momentum.
I really needed better offensive abilities than just my bark blast, which I just used at point blank range downwards into a shrimp to send it slamming into the right of the octopus machine and the explosion did a bit of damage.
A light bulb lit above my head and I looked at the other shrimp crawling around.
“Smolder, smash the shrimp into its big goofy eyes!” The shrimp machines could do some damage where I couldn’t.
-Shanty-
As I reached the top I swung my right hoof, the lizard had been waiting for me and he be leaping back quite a fair distance while regarding me as I took up a position in front of him.
He held up his gloved hands together and narrowed his eyes at me and I be grinning, he fired a fiery looking skull and I be rolling to the side and charging forward around it. He then be launching five knives at me, I inhaled and then proudly shouted my spirit into the world.
“Yarr!” My magically empowered outburst deflected all the knives straight up into the air spinning and I recalled some things I learned from Tai Lung, Po and Tigress.
I swiped my left hoof forward and smacked it into the first knife, my right hoof swung forward hitting the second one, I leapt up spinning to hit the next one with my back right hoof and then my back left hoof hit the last two in one sweep. I be liking the skewer reflection technique.
The lizard be leaving after images as he dodged around the first three, but when he dodge the fourth, the fifth struck through his armor into his right shoulder. He growled at me angrily and brought his gloves hands together again.
He fire three fiery skulls at me and I rolled under the first one only for the two that flew off to both sides of me to suddenly swerved straight for me, I back flipped out of the way as the two skulls of energy slammed into each other.
Just as be getting my hoofing, he surged forward with the upper half of his body becoming massive muscles and brought his right fist down. I rolled forward under his arms and dove at his legs.
His fist created a powerful shockwave behind me and his face smashed into the metal of the octopus machine when I was launched forward by the force and took his legs out from under him.
He growled and said something I couldn’t quite understand and then split into many smaller copies of himself after he brought his hands together.
-Smolder-
I had my combat ribbon tied to my left horn at the start of the fight, I thought it looked adorable and cute as much as it was resilient and a weapon. When Pom called out for it, I pulled my ribbon from my horn and whipped it around and wrapped it around the nearest shrimp and slammed it into the octopus’s right eye like a ball and chain.
I saw what Pom was doing when she started maneuvering herself to buck the shrimp back at this monster while trying to avoid the tentacles. She was trying to focus down the right eye and the more shrimp the octopus put out the more return to sends we could do.
I didn’t have a problem with the tentacles as I was in the air and the tentacles were far too slow to grab onto me, but when they started to herd Pom and almost got her, Dodo would come charging it for a hit and run to do some damage to the metal limbs.
“Pom you’re side!” I stated and saw her look at the fact that she was bleeding slightly from her train wound.
“I just popped a few stitches, don’t worry!” Pom stated as she leapt between two tentacles as a third tried to sweep her up from behind, she surprised me with how acrobatic she was sometimes and nearly avoided getting grabbed by a fourth tentacle by rolling to the right and away from the machine.
I could see a few specks of red on the surrounded grass and Pom continued to dodge blasts from various shrimp, I picked out a target and whipped out my ribbon to wrap it around the metal shrimp’s waist. I flapped my wings roughly a few times and heaved it off the ground and into the right eye of the monster and looked for even more opportunities to be an eye sore for the machine.
“Well I’m going to worry, because bleeding in the middle of a deadly fight like this isn’t healthy Pom!” Somehow she managed to get a powerful one hoof buck that sent a metal shrimp that was about to uncurl flying.
The shrimp must have hit something critical as the right eye of the octopus started sparking and caught fire.
It was disturbing sight to see the large goofy eye started melting to reveal the evil core underneath it, it was decently cracked and a few more good hits like that could break it completely. Only Pom was beginning to slow down from her injury that hasn’t completely healed over.
There was a subtle shift in the air as the octopus stopped trying to send its tentacles after Pom, in fact the entire machine started changing color from red to a demented looking dark purple. Something changed slightly in the gaze of its left goofy looking eye.
All eight tentacles lifted up and pointed straight down in front of itself and it fired shrimp point blank into the ground. Something was off about them though, they weren’t curled up when they came out and looked more like eight poles in the ground.
Then the eight shrimp fell over, they looked the same, but something was…
“Wait… those aren’t shrimp… Smolder get down!” I followed her voice as well as my instincts and the eight shrimp machines suddenly got their front halves lifted into the air and a massive spread of energy blasts, sure they were smaller than what the shrimp could do, but far more numerous and they fired faster.
“If they aren’t shrimp, then what are… agh!” I yelped as I was struck by several blasts that scorched my scales, I felt myself hit something soft after I fell.
“Are you okay, did that hurt you?” Pom asked worriedly while looking me over after having caught me.
I didn’t answer her and leapt from her hooves to take a series of shots for her while covering my face with my arms and trying to avoid the webbing of my wings being hit.
“I’m fine, this just stings.” The numerous shots I was taking from these slightly different machines were pouring out at a rapid pace were powerful enough to scorch my scales. “A lot.”
“Those aren’t shrimp, it’s created metal prawns!” The notable difference from what Pom and I could see was that these machines had extra shooting limbs instead of one that snapped out smaller shots at faster speeds and they were a bit larger than the shrimp and had heavier armor.
“Too bad I can’t just eat them, this is really making me miss eating seafood and sushi with Silver Stream.” If my friend drinks salmon juice, then you can be assured she was meat eater as most hippogriffs and sea ponies tended to be.
That’s when the octopus machine started fire metal prawns to spear the ground before becoming active and various mechanical shrimp that came out as spheres, then the two sets of mechanical menaces started intermingling making it harder to tell which was a shrimp or a prawn.
The prawn could mimic the appearance of the shrimp, only their legs were slightly different in being able to split open and fire like the shrimp did and at a much higher rate. The shrimp had the bigger shots, whereas these prawns could put out more numerous and weaker shots.
“Really deceptive prawns by the looks of it they look almost the same as the shrimp!” I stated as I started avoiding the manner shots coming at us from the two variations of machines that the octopus generated. Pom was no slouch in the evasion department as we were being overwhelmed by the massive amounts of energy firing at us, sometimes the bolts would be bigger and that’s how you could tell that a shrimp had fired.
I watch Pom yelp as she took a hit to the chest from a large bolt and her wool got damaged somewhat.
“We need to deal with the tentacles to stop it from creating any more of those things!” Pom stated as she rolled to the side and nearly took a shot across her right cheek. “I really just want to go home to Tianhuo...”
“I want to go home too, but that’s not happening today Pom!” I try to move closer to the tentacles and was met with a wall of shots aimed my way. “I can’t get close enough to damage the tentacles further like this Pom, what do we do?!”
“Hope that Shanty can at least make that lizard retreat and then come to help us.” Pom whimpered as one of her legs was blasted out from under her taking out a large chunk of wool on it.
Dodo came charging in and stamped down on several of the shrimp and prawn as he passed by firing into the growing crowd of smaller machines and drew fire from all of them for us he did so.
“Jean and Colleen better hurry up with that backup or at least weapons to deal with this!” I growled out, we had only managed to deal a moderate amount of damage to two of the tentacles, a third tentacles was dented and couldn’t twist or maneuver around as well thanks to hitting Pom while she was doing her immovable fluff wall thing.
-Cladinhold Armory, Jean-
“Go, Pom and the others have been fighting that machine for too long on their own already!” Colleen shouted at me as she shoved a rocket tube and a satchel into my webbed fingers, we had cleaned up the town in an exemplary and timely fashion.
That was only because Ocellus’s friends were distracting the machine generating these metal menaces and I was quickly running towards the fight as fast as my webbed feet could carry me with a rocket tube strapped to me and a small satchel of ammo bouncing against the side of my armor.
I hoped to arrive before our comrades were defeated in a most permanent, Colleen was to secure more weapons and help against the machine to the south. We just happened to be waylaid by other problems.
If we hadn’t had need to deal with an attack from the east we would have been there to help our courier team friends sooner, but without the support of the machine from the south we had routed the main bulk of the invading Gedol forces from the east quite well.
That is to say that Bruno helped Biggs, Wedge and many other fighters route the enemy forces coming from the east in several combat vehicles and many foot soldiers armed with fake rocket pack replicas that a real rocket knight would use.
The south was still a problem and I aimed to correct that and see to the survival of those who I wished to see as good friends, hopefully I would arrive in the nick of time to honor our burgeoning comradery.
With rocket tube at my back and rapier by my side I believed I could be of great assistance to the problem down south as I charged into battle once more!
Upon arriving upon the scene of the fight, I slowed to a stop and took in everything going on for a second. There were the mechanical shrimp yes, but they were faster firing machines among their number that were subtly different. The land strider was trying it’s best to cover for the orange flying lizard and the kin of lambs Pom.
Both had taken injuries and were doing their best to try and hold the machine’s attention. I did not see the small bandanna wearing child, until I looked to the top of the machine’s head to witness her locked in combat with that dastardly Paeli, the ninja commander of the Gedol Forces!
Surprisingly the blade limbed child was holding her own against the nasty tricks that monstrous cur Paeli could bring about. I saw some of Pom’s movements in the child and smiled wistfully. Pom might not be the mother by blood, but she was her mother all the same in teachings.
I pulled the rocket tube from my back and crouched down to take careful aim, I pulled the trigger and a rocket flew fourth to blow out one of the monstrous machines eyes that was visible. The evil core blew apart and half the machines tentacles went limp for a second as did half the machines offending my new friends.
The other eye glowed and the tentacles raised off the ground, but were moving slower and all the smaller mechanical monsters were back up and moving once more.
My first shot with this thing was quite a surprising success… now how do I reload this darn thing?
Colleen said it was as easy as aiming and firing, but she never mentioned the other niggling little complications to it.
I hadn’t told anyone this, but I wasn’t a soldier or a fighter… I was a duelist, a well renowned one that could thrust a rapier so hard that it could pierce a brick wall from ten feet away.
This was my first time actually being on a battlefield and it was as dangerous as many of the frogs of home said it would be, but I was not disheartened to learn of this fact.
Colleen may be an ex-soldier of Yellow Dog Army, but I was willing to trust her without a shadow of a doubt to catch up and bring a great bit of assistance. I shall eventually figure out how to reload the rocket tube later, but first…
“I am Jean De’la Frogois and you are my enemy this day for hurting those that would be my companions!” I shouted as I charged forward while shouldering the rocket tube and pulling my rapier out. “Have at you and your evil spawns of darkness!”
I started shredding straight through these metal monsters and their slightly odder versions. My armor took multiple shots for me as I leapt further into the fray with a smile on my face and a heroic dream in my heart.
I would turn the tide of battle with my very spirit alone if I had to, for these odds were never insurmountable!